This weekend sees A Noodle Story aka Three Guns, Zhang Yimou‘s daffy-sounding comedy period movie remake of Blood Simple, hit Chinese cinema screens – if you haven’t seen the trailer yet please take a moment to go and bask in its great glowing eccentricity. With that one finally over and out, however, what’s next for the director?

Well, it may be Romance Under a Hawthorn Tree or, apparently more likely, it will be The Thirteen Women of Jinling. This one will be a war time drama set during the 1937 Japanese invasion of China and will be focused on the characters of thirteen refugee prostitutes hiding out in a Nanjing church. As well as these very many roles for Chinese actresses, it seems there’s going to be a dash of Hollywood too. According to producer Zhang Weiping, the production has so far approached Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, and each of them has already shown their interest.